For several years now, contract management has established itself in France as an essential discipline for organisations that want to optimise the lifecycle of their contracts and improve project performance. But like any discipline still being built, it needs common reference points, shared tools and clear terminology if it is to reach maturity and recognition.
It is in this context that the French contract management association (AFCM) recently published a set of documents entitled "interface sheets". Far more than a set of slides, these sheets are an important contribution to structuring contract management the French way.
At Prime Conseil we naturally took a close look at them, and we welcome an initiative that gives our profession greater visibility. But as we shall see, their value lies as much in what they bring as in the way they are used.
I. A genuine step forward for the profession
a. A map of the interactions
These sheets are an excellent map of the main interfaces a contract manager faces throughout the contract lifecycle, and for each contract management process they show how the contract manager interacts with the procurement, legal, project and sales functions, to name only those.
These interactions are in fact well known to contract managers, but the map is far from trivial. It formalises a single overview of what we all experience day to day, and lists those interactions almost exhaustively.
b. A common baseline for organisations
The sheets therefore act as a kind of foundation. A foundation that gives organisations a starting point to launch or strengthen their contract management processes, and more broadly to understand better what contract management is for and where it sits (among other questions that are simple but key to the discipline).
For beginners, these sheets will be a reassuring guide. For organisations that are already mature, they can serve as an aide-memoire, or even as internal communication material.
They are also a reminder of a reality too often forgotten: contract management is not limited to contractual knowledge or to technical and administrative follow-up. It is a cross-functional activity, in constant contact with many other functions, requiring wide-ranging knowledge, strong communication skills and impeccable interpersonal conduct.
II. The limits: between universality and superficiality
a. The eternal trade-off of general frameworks
As H.G. Wells put it, these sheets carry within them the "defects of their qualities". Their strength is their universality: with rare exceptions, they apply to every sector and every size of company. But that same universality brings a degree of superficiality.
In plain terms, they set out the broad principles, but they do not say how, in practice, to implement a contract management process suited to a particular organisation. For example, they do not explain how to identify failing interfaces, what to do when interfaces are not working, where to position contract management, or even how to allocate certain activities between several functions (using a RACI matrix, for instance).
b. The false good idea of immediate implementation
Some may be tempted to use these sheets as a ready-made recipe, straight off the shelf. That would be a mistake. The risk is to believe that general principles can be turned into operational processes without effort or adaptation.
We see it every day with our clients: the success of a contract management process rests on many other factors:
- the company culture,
- its human and financial resources,
- the maturity of its internal processes,
- the lifecycle stages to prioritise,
- the place the organisation wants to give the contract manager,
- and so on.
In other words, the sheets are a first draft. They lay the groundwork for a future framework, along the lines of what the NCMA already offers in the United States with the contract management standard or the CMBOK. But they do not remove the need for adaptation and contextualisation.
III. How do you move from theory to practice?
a. The need for a baseline
The interface sheets can be used as a starting point. They allow you to define a baseline, a minimum foundation on which to build genuine contract management processes. They provide a common language, a universal framework to be shaped around the specifics of an organisation. Measuring the maturity of your contract management helps here too (see our maturity assessment matrix for contract management).
The real work starts afterwards. It consists of turning these concepts into concrete practices, tailored to each company!
b. Testing concepts against reality
We say it often enough: there is no magic wand. The success of a contract management process depends above all on the ability to understand the company culture and its revenue model (how a company creates value), to analyse its strengths and constraints, its environment (the PESTEL matrix comes to mind), its existing processes, and ultimately to align contract management with all these ingredients (and not the other way round).
Far too often we see organisations with numerous contract management processes (whether or not they are called that), but which are little known, or even unworkable in practice.
A few examples to illustrate the point:
- contract management attached to and sitting alongside a head-office legal department, in a decentralised organisation with a strongly "sales" or "risk taking" culture, will have very limited impact; in such cases it is better to have contract managers present locally, with different line and functional reporting,
- processes requiring a risk and opportunity matrix to be circulated at least 14 days before an internal go/no-go review will be applied little, if at all, because in practice the timescales for analysing and responding to RFPs and tenders are almost always far shorter),
- A process requiring every version of every contract or contract amendment to be reviewed and approved by a lawyer, a contract manager, a buyer, a management controller and so on will prove far too complex for small contracts and/or for projects with many supplier sub-contracts to be concluded within tight deadlines. It is better to add granularity to these processes so that they fit the context.
In short, and we cannot repeat it often enough: every case is unique, and a fine process that is never applied is the worst option of all.
c. an interface role, but also one of agility
Finally, these sheets are a reminder of an essential truth: contract management is a discipline of movement and contact. It cannot be dogmatic. On the contrary, it must remain agile and malleable, able to interface with the company's other functions.
Dogmatism is probably one of contract management's worst enemies. The sheets help us avoid it, provided we use them as a guide and not as an immutable standard.
One step closer to a French contract management framework
The AFCM's interface sheets are a step forward worth welcoming. To a body of doctrine and frameworks that is above all American, they add a vision that values the contract manager's role "the French way". More broadly, these sheets also lay new foundations for a future framework (or an ISO standard?) that could in time become a reference in France.
They still have to be used wisely! Applied and rolled out as they are, these sheets risk having very limited impact on practice within an organisation. Used as food for thought, however, enriched by experience and set in the context of a company culture and the resources allocated, they can become an outstanding guide for moving the discipline forward.
In short, these sheets, the product of painstaking collective intelligence, are one more piece of reference material to read, re-read and test against your daily practice.